The enemy within: Chavez' military folly continues

14.04.05 | President Hugo Chavez continued playing the external enemy threat card in his speeches, seeing ghosts everywhere in order to distract from the failures of his Government. Like a modern poor version of Don Quijote, Chavez sees windmills everywhere. Besides the US invasion, which he has focused on for the last few weeks, he started ranting about the fact that NATO was using an invasion of Venezuela in its training exercises, which
was quickly denied by NATO itself. As if this was not enough, he also responded to supposed statements by Colombian President Uribe saying that unless Venezuela changed, it would isolate itself. Chavez kept saying he would wait to reply to see if the statements were true, but proceeded to answer to them anyway, not once, not twice but three times. The Colombian Foreign Minister denied
that Uribe had even made reference to Venezuela while in Japan, but the damage to Venezuelan diplomacy was done as Chavez proceeded to say this is all part of the US plot against Venezuela.

This is all of course a textbook strategy for autocratic regimes: since personality cults, fear and propaganda can only carry you so far, you need to create the external enemy in order to reinforce the support of the loyalist and keep on your side those that are doubters because of the lack of accomplishments and progress by the Government. These strategies have been clearly posed by Sakharov and recently presented in clear form in Sharansky’s
“The case for democracy”, a must read for anyone that believes in freedom, democracy and human rights.

But Venezuela is becoming increasingly a militaristic country, run by an autocrat who now controls all of the structures of the state, including the military, who wants to merge the population with the Armed Forces and who
finds glory in the bloody days of the beginning of the Republic, who talks about “the civic military unit, forming citizen soldiers and soldiers who are citizens…people and soldier, soldier and people, you are the most sublime expression of the civic-military fusion which today becomes the strongest column of the Bolivarian Venezuela”. Who talks about sovereignty or death, who calls traitors those who do not understand the meaning of the newly created reserves. Yes, Venezuela enters deeper into the territory of Chavez’ folly today, that project that may irreversibly ruin this country for decades to come, whose only objective is to preserve this madman in power.

And the madman is equally surrounded by Generals, who not only believe in reincarnation and support his folly, but cry openly when people applaud him because he is a patriot or justify the existence of the newly created two million men reserve by
comparing Venezuela to the State of Israel, “where every man is a soldier”. Meanwhile his Vice
President uses swear words to say that Chavez is great because he sent “el Imperio al carajo”, an empire who in 1998 decided not to pay attention to Chavez and let him be, but that Chavez tries to awaken at every step with his continuous rape of democracy, democratic institutions and justice, in this unfortunate country.

Meanwhile the death of 19 Venezuelans is celebrated three years later as a day of “dignity” as there is total impunity in the investigation of these deaths, let alone the over one hundred people injured that day. Sadly, of the 19 deaths, people are jailed for only two cases, because they may involve the Metropolitan Police controlled at the time by an opposition Mayor. The other 17 cases are not even being investigated, as the Prosecutor, the same man in charge of enforcing the law in Venezuela openly says the National Guard refuses to turn over evidence to his office, which simply proves what a joke he has made of that office which has simply become another servile unit of the revolution and Chavez’ autocratic power.

In the end it is Chavez that has become the external enemy to all Venezuelans. Driven by the bearded Cuban fool, he tries to introduce values that violate our nature and sovereignty. Venezuelans are not militaristic, they do not hate, they admire the US, and they don’t want the country to become another Cuba. They just want a better tomorrow, which has been constantly denied to them in the last thirty years. But Chavez, the enemy within, just has grandiose plans for himself, not for his people, which in the end can only have a sad ending for our poor country.